About
Hi there! My name is Samuel, though most people call me Sam. I made this website to keep track of where I've been in my professional life, for my own sake, but I hope you find it useful as well.
My story is not unlike many others in the technology field, one where a hobby became a life-long passion. For one reason or another, I have been creating software for over 15 years. The industry took hold of me as a teenager, during long Montana winters with little else to do, and really cemented itself once I moved to Silicon Valley.
As a very fortunate person indeed, my career has provided a lot of growth over the years. I've had the opportunity to work with some incredible companies, as well as create a few of my own. You could say I've had a lot of on-the-job training in both software engineering as well as business management.
One persistent theme across all of the work I find enjoyable is solving hard problems with a great team. Most recently, I find myself taking on leadership roles, however I enjoy and resepect every aspect of the creation process.
Resume
Coinbase
Engineering Manager
Transitioned to the manager role when our prior manager quit, ensuring continuity of leadership on the team.
- Consolidated redundant teams into a new vertically integrated Promotional Products team which owns Learning Rewards, Quests, Referrals and Ads for Coinbase
- Launched Coinbase Wallet Referrals, providing a major new user acquisition lever for the product
- Designed new high performance Ads platform, for serving Learning Rewards, Quests, and now Ads throughout Coinbase surfaces
Staff Software Engineer
Joined the Coinbase Wallet team after BRD was acquired.
- Chartered and led consumer safety team for Coinbase Wallet, designing and implementing a novel transaction simulation functionality for EVMs, ensuring customers can see what side effects transactions will have before signing
- Created critical payment infrastructure, supporting features like interactive minting, Quests, free USDC sends, and more
- Up-leveling backend infrastructure, managing multiple modernization workstreams improving reliability and performance
BRD
CTO
BRD was a financial technology company focused on the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. As CTO, I was responsible for defining and carrying out the product vision for the company.
- Created an engineering team from scratch, topping at over 30 team members
- Defined the product roadmap and bringing new products to market
- Oversaw the security of over $8 billion in customer funds
In the over 6 years at BRD we have saw incredible growth and expansion. From relatively humble beginnings as a simple Bitcoin wallet for iOS, I grew the BRD product portfolio to include multiple revenue sources and over 10 million users. Some of the highlights over the past 6+ years include.
- Brought our app to Android app with no compromise to customer security
- Designed and implemented monetization strategy for consumer mobile apps
- Raised $32M to fund the BRD Rewards Program in an ERC20 token offering
- Created Blockset, an enterprise blockchain data service, which powered the BRD app and 3rd enterprise customers
Making Friends Inc.
Co-Founder, CTO
Making Friends' mission was to dramatically improve the quality and effectiveness of autism care services. We started in 2013 with an iPad game focused on teaching social skills to kids on the medium-high autistic spectrum. In 2014 we pivoted into a patient management platform as we learned more about the space. In 2015 our staff and product was acquired by Nightingale.
- Lead development of mobile iPad game
- Created highly configurable patient management platform with dynamic content types, governed by a dynamic roles and permissions system
- Majority investor, providing funding for development, business, marketing, and legal
Lightt Inc
Co-Founder, CTO
Lightt began as the manifestation of my desire to create a moving, daily portrait of mine and my friends life. In a way, it is sort of the ancestor to Snapchat and Instagram Stories. It was a video capture and consuption application that allowed you to capture short segments that became part of an infite timeline you could jump into at any time.
It was acquired in 2014 and shuttered in 2015. You can still see videos of it youtube.
- Product creation and vision from the beginning
- Raised a $1M seed round on MVP
- Built an engineering and product team
- Flawless day-1 launch with hundreds-of-thousands of downloads
Steamboat Labs LLC
Founder, CEO
Steamboat Labs is a technology boutique specializing in building MVP products for entrepreneurs. We've built companies that started as sketches on bar napkins as well as provided mission-critical technology for Fortune 50 companies, and nearly everything in-between.
- Booked over US $1M/yr in business
- Notable clients include Intel, Microsoft, and Google, among many others
- Defining product, and hiring teams for startups
- Built MVPs for many well-known products and companies
Yammer, Inc.
Lead Mobile Engineer
Yammer is a workplace communication platform that has been described as a private Facebook for your company. I joined at a time when they had no mobile team or vision to speak of. In a few months time, I designed and created their iPhone app and soon after the iPad app. These became the basis for the apps developed by the Android team which I also lead.
- Designed and developed iPhone app in 3 months
- 2 months later delivered an iPad app
- Built iOS and Android development teams